'Absurd Claims': EAM Jaishankar On China's 'Standard Map' Staking Claim To Arunachal Pradesh

The map featured parts of Indian territory with areas including Arunachal Pradesh and Aksai Chin region as well as Taiwan and the disputed South China Sea. 

File photo of External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar

Source : PTI

New Delhi: External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar on Tuesday dismissed China's 2023 "standard" map which lays claim to Indian territory.

In an interview with NDTV, Jaishankar said that it is China's "old habit" of releasing such maps and that merely including the territories of other countries in its maps doesn't make them theirs.

"China has put out maps with territories (that are) not theirs. (It is an) old habit. Just by putting out maps with parts of India... this doesn't change in anything. Our government is very clear about what our territory. Making absurd claims does not make other people's territories yours," he told NDTV.

This comes after China’s state-run Global Times stated that the 2023 edition of China's standard map was officially released on Monday and launched on the website of the standard map service hosted by the Ministry of Natural Resources.

The map featured parts of Indian territory with areas including Arunachal Pradesh and Aksai Chin region as well as Taiwan and the disputed South China Sea. 

External Affairs Ministry's Spokesperson Arindam Bagchi on Tuesday said, "We have today lodged a strong protest through diplomatic channels with the Chinese side on the so-called 2023 "standard map” of China that lays claim to India’s territory."

"We reject these claims as they have no basis. Such steps by the Chinese side only complicate the resolution of the boundary question,” he added.

Notably, the map has been released days after PM Modi’s bilateral talk with Chinese President Xi Jinping on the sidelines of the BRICS Summit in South Africa where the two leaders discussed the situation along the Line of Actual Control.

India has continuously communicated that "Arunachal Pradesh was, is and will always remain an integral and inalienable part of India." 

S Jaishankar On Abrogation Of Article 370

The Foreign Minister said that the revocation of Article 370 is "one of the biggest achievements" of the ruling government, reported NDTV.

"I had gone there when I joined the government in 1979... I went to the same place in 2019...  and I was amazed at how little had changed there between 1979 and 2019," he told NDTV.

Notably, his statements come at a time when a five-judge constitutional bench of the Supreme Court is hearing the pleas challenging the abrogation of Article 370 that bestowed special status on the erstwhile state of Jammu and Kashmir.

Jaishanker stated that the state of Jammu and Kashmir was kept backward because of political reasons.

"Forget about everything else, actually we kept that state backward for reasons of politics... I saw how the rest of the world used this issue, to pressurise us, to damage us... and if people ask me in these five years to list our key achievements, I'd certainly put how we countered Covid... and I'd definitely put what we did with Article 370 because it has long term benefits," he told NDTV.

The Centre had on August 5, 2019, come out with the notification repealing Article 370, stripping the erstwhile state of Jammu and Kashmir of its special status.